Sermon Luke 13:31-35 February 21, 2016 HPMF, Lent 2 Title: The Challenge of Lent Luke 13:31-35 The Lament over Jerusalem 31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you. 32 He said to them, Go and tell that fox for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem. 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. ON THE WESTERN slope of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem, there is a small chapel called Dominus Flevit. The name comes from Luke's Gospel, which contains two accounts of Jesus grieving over Jerusalem thus the chapel is shaped like a tear drop.! According to tradition, it was here that Jesus wept over the city that had refused his prophet work, that rejected the vision of God he was teaching, that objected to the boundary shattering 1
love he was living. It was Christian pilgrims during the era of the crusades that first marked this spot as Jesus place of lament. Inside the chapel, there is an altar centered before a high arched window that looks out over Jerusalem that city where Jesus and other prophets before him were rejected.!! Iron grillwork divides the view into sections, so that on a sunny day it is reportedly like a stained glass window. The difference is that this subject is alive the holy city that keeps living and changing. The top two-thirds of the view is the sky above the city, which the grillwork turns into a quilt of blue squares. The bottom third gives a view of the city itself, with the Dome of the Rock in the bottom left corner and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the middle. Down below, on the front of the altar, is a picture a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a golden halo around her head.!! 2
! Her red comb resembles a crown, and her wings are spread wide to shelter the pale yellow chicks that crowd around her feet. There are seven of them, with black dots for eyes and orange dots for beaks. They look happy to be there. The hen looks ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone who might come near her babies. I am not sure if you can tell, but the medallion is rimmed with red words in Latin, which, translated into English they read part of our scripture for today, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! With those final words not willing being in red, underneath the feet of the baby chicks. And so, tradition tells us that it is from here that Jesus looked out over the city he loved and lamented what it had become, what it was. From here he lamented in sadness what his religious tradition had become. Where he lamented the ways the powerful exploited the poor and oppressed those who worked for change. He lamented his city. His nation. His religion. A lament for what is. For what 3
could be, but is not. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!! And we too often lament over what we see when we look out the window over our current situation we often are filled with sadness over how things are, and how they are not, but could be. We might look out over our own lives, and lament the ways that things are. Over things we are doing and not doing over the ways we lose our temper or talk to those we love; over the things that still seem to have power over us food or alcohol or gossiping or pornography or our inability to release control; shopping or collecting or television or other things that we use to numb the feelings we don t like; the number of hours we work or the ways we still notice we care too much about what others think. We might look out that window at our own life and lament a bit what we see. Or we might look out over our family and lament a bit the way things are, and the way things are not, but we wish they could be. Over the time we don t seem to have for each other, the amount of time we spend running around to activities, or the amount of time we are working even when we are at home; over the way we talk to each other, or the places of brokenness that still exist. These might cause us to lament as we look through the windows of our family life. 4
Or it could be that when we look out over our religion and church, we lament what we see. Over the ways the church has done damage to a lot of people with judgmental and selfrighteous actions, the ways the church has excluded certain people groups and the ways it continues to exclude gays and lesbians; the ways it still sometimes elevates men as superior to women even in ways we are not aware of it; the ways it still defers a bit more power to those with the most resources even though that was the opposite of Jesus message. The ways it might struggle to listen to new and different perspectives the ways it sometimes feels it is more worried about its own survival than following Jesus. We sometimes see these things through the pieces of glass, and that can cause to shed tears of lament over what still has not yet come to be after thousands of years of being the church of Jesus Christ. We likely lament often when we look out the window at our own city, when we see more and more landlords selling their properties and new owners evicting their low-income tenants in order to remodel and raise the rental prices. And certainly when we look out the window of our own state and see an unwillingness to cover 80,000 more Idahoans with health insurance; as we continue to struggle to offer a welcome to refugees and can t quite agree on equal rights for all people. And as we look at the window of our country, we likely lament the continued polarization we witness the hateful speech that is thrown about in the name of power and politics the fear that seems to be driving so much of what we do, the money that seems to be in control of most of our decisions, and the ways we seem to be moving further and further away from truly listening and understanding each other. 5
As we look out the window of our world, we likely lament the continued tragic and negative news of more and more violence we see daily. And so when Jesus looks out over Jerusalem, it is not hard to imagine how he was moved to shed a tear! it is not hard to imagine how he lamented what he saw, what his city and nation and religion had become. But, Jesus does not stop with lament. Lament was part of his process. Seeing how things are and how things have been are part of his reality they are part of his humanness. The pain of what exists is part of what makes Jesus fully human what he sees can not simply be swept under the rug. But he does not stop with what is. He does not stop with his tears. He continues on. Nor, is he stopped by the negative messages from those around him the messages from those who want to maintain the status quo. He is not stopped even by threats on his life. He is not stopped by those who tell him that going further might make others upset, that teaching what he is teaching might threaten his tenure-track. He is not deterred by those who say that voting this way might cost him the next election, or those who say raising your children that way will make them odd or weird ; he is not halted by those who say that giving that much money away 6
might be bad for his future security, or that listening to others or changing your mind makes you weak. He is not stopped by the pain or disappointment of what is, he is not stopped by the fear of the unknown. He continues on with what God has called him to do. He continues toward Jerusalem to be a bearer of God s love and justice. He continues teaching and living a love that can transform the way things are; he continues proclaiming a God who is still working and moving; he keeps preaching against the hurtful and harmful systems at work. There is hope. Hope for what might be When we look out that window, we will lament at times. Just as lament was part of Jesus story, it will surely be part of our story. It is part of our humanness, when we are honest about life and what we see to be true to ourselves, we will have to lament at times. But there is more to see as well, there is hope to see, if we look hard enough if we squint our eyes just so as we look out the window, we might just see a bit of hope a bit of how things could be. For example in the Christian church we can look out and see only the sins of the past: we can see only the short-comings of the church. Those are real and we must lament them, and there is also hope to see: 1) Twenty-five years ago the World literacy rate was about 55%, today it is almost 85%. And who has done most of the reading and literacy programs around the world? The church of Jesus Christ. People like Sister Martha who helps dozens of children in Tanzania receive an education who would otherwise not people lamented what was, but also saw what could be. 7
!! 2) 25 years ago about 42,000 children died every day from hunger and malnutrition, today that number is 17,000 a day. Now, there is still a lot ways to go, but that is a huge improvement, huge strides toward making that number zero. And who does most of the feeding and nutrition programs? The church of Jesus Christ. People like Angel and Janet who ensure dozens of children in Puerto Assis are fed a nutritious meal everyday as part of their education.! 3) 25 years ago about one in six people in the world did not have access to good, safe drinking water. Today it is 1 in 12 people. And who has drilled most of those wells? The church of Jesus Christ. 8
! 4) This past year Habitat for Humanity completed their one-millionth house for people around the world in need of shelter better than any HUD or government program could do this is a program of the church of Jesus Christ. These are all possible because of people of God who lamented over what they saw, but did not stop with lament they continued to work in hope that it could be another way. People who were not stopped by fear or threats or apathy or comfort or the realities of what was people who trust that God can still bring resurrection. They do not have to be big things. We can start with making a change in our own life nothing is too small. We start by noticing something in our own lives that we are lamenting, something we would like to be a little different. LENT offers us a time to try that, to shape something we want to be doing differently; to add or subtract something from our lives. And it is not too late, there are still thirty-five days left! Lent is a time in the Christian church when we try to reflect and take notice something in our lives that perhaps we are lamenting and we want it to be differently. Some people give up chocolate it might seem small, but in our culture, to deny yourself anything you want is an act of power and resistance. The act of refraining from 9
something that you sometimes use to fill an emptiness inside of you, that is a brave act nothing is too small. I know some of you who look over the world and lament the warming effect that our actions are having. And so you are trying to be vegan for Lent, giving up on animal-based products because of the methane they put into the air. You are trying to not stop with lament, but to live into an act of hope trying to live toward part of the mission that you feel called to in your life. Jenna and I are trying to watch TV (including our computer) and movies only twice a week. I could not go complete cold-turkey, but only twice a week to watch something. I can feel where I am probably a bit addicted (maybe a lot addicted) to tuning out with the use of media the ways I sometimes try to fill an empty place with entertainment, a place that is meant for God alone. I have seen this happening for awhile, I have noticed the urge to want to turn on the computer as soon as I walk in the door in order to shut my mind off. And I have noticed myself thinking that I don t really want to be that way I have been lamenting it for awhile, but not really having the desire to change. And so, we are seeing what it feels like to try and make a change to try and live a bit differently for a little while and see how it feels. To see what we notice, to see if anything changes for us. Maybe it will not really make much of a difference, or, maybe it will. We are a week in, and we have both admitted to missing it. Like Jesus, we must be honest about what is. We must mourn and lament those things we see. And, like Jesus, we must not stop with what we see as we look over Jerusalem we must not stop with what we see. 10
! We must continue on to those places where we feel God calling us we must continue to join with the small and big ways God is calling us to be odd and peculiar people in this strange world; where God, our mother Hen, is inviting us to join in lamenting what is, and hope for what will be that healing and hope might flow through us, and into the world. Amen. 11